


singularity

by rakukajas



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Banter, Dissociation, Dubious Use of Physics, Emetophobia, Fluff, M/M, Makeouts, Matt Holt is the Mystery Blue Guy AU, Poorly disguised headcanons, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, abuse of science, this is the single most self-indulgent thing i could ever possibly write and i have no regrets, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 19:31:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7726930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rakukajas/pseuds/rakukajas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, of course, instead of being the smart and composed human being he’s suppose to be, Matt Holt the aerospace engineer (currently minoring in astrobiology, because, hey, fuck you, it’s <i>awesome</i>) gives his words a staggering zero-point-three seconds of serious consideration before blurting out, very simply, “You’re an idiot, and it’s making life kind of difficult for me.”</p><p>// or: Matt learns what it’s like to have everything he loves ripped away from him and decides, mainly over the course of a lucid dream and a botched amputation, that he’s never going to let it happen again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	singularity

**Author's Note:**

> this was all made possible by @favoritelittleheartattack’s lovely prompt! hope it does it justice! ;)  
> special thanks to @ceedawkes for being so supportive! <3
> 
> also ??? what do you mean i’m projecting onto matt ??? the dude has like three seconds of screen time and i needed more to work with lmao
> 
> warnings for: dissociation, unreality, PTSD, emetophobia, canon-typical violence, the works  
> thanks again! ♡♡♡

 

╰☆╮

 

When Matt was a boy, knock-kneed and excited, his father would take him down to the harbor and let him sift through the surf for fossils.

 _Ammonites_ , he’d said. _History’s bookmarks. You can date almost anything if you find one of these babies._

And he was a bright kid, eager to please, so Matt would search, sweating, plastic shovel in hand, until the sun went down and the skin on his elbows started to peel. His hands were always pink; from sitting on them, from the heat of the sand, and he would insist every weekend on coming back. Tug at his mom’s legs, bargain with chores. Had a hobby by six and an impressive collection by eight. Found comfort in organization, would rearranged them by dates, color, size; saw beauty in the way they spiraled, similar, not always congruent. Held them with trembling, dirty hands under the light of the sun, blinking through a kaleidoscope of brilliance. He loved it. He loved _all_ of it.

The confused but nonetheless impressed praise from his parents, from the board, was unparalleled, and over the course of a childhood and a half they tried to wrangle the smart out of him by putting it in front of podiums, just to see what it could do. He was a little weird, relatively speaking. If he stood on his tip-toes for long enough, he could see words like 'neuroplasticity' on his doctor's reports. Numbers and letters clicked together in his head as easy as breathing, and no matter what, it would all circle back to that beach. Spirographs, journals open and pressed to the prettiest pages--polygons, shapes and patterns and sequences--oh, man, it all made _sense_.

Katie was jealous, but, to be fair, it was harder to pinpoint when she wasn’t, so Matt wasn’t bothered. He had his fossils (and his rocks and his books and his tapes) and no reason to worry, because the beach would always be here to search in, and the fossils would always be here to search for.

In that way, it was kind of like a second home to him. He knew the surf like he knew his tomes: embarrassingly combed through, but somehow always lending new bits of insight. Invaluable. Sacrosanct.

So it’s easy to see why he’s so offended (jokingly and justifiably) when Shiro thinks it’s a good idea to fool around in it.

“Nope,” he says, arms crossed. He’s certain that this is going to end in chaos. “Nuh-uh. No, _sir,_ you must be kidding if you think I’m going anywhere near that water.”

There’s a beat of silence, where the waves slosh between his words, and then something red is hurtling at him like a softball. “... Whoa, hey, _shit--_ ”

Matt’s in the middle of protesting when he’s cut off by the sound of an empty pail hitting the boulder right near his head with a _thunk_. It’s not a hard throw, by any means, but he knows a playful Shiro when he sees one. “Wh-- hey!”

“Matt, I promise, you’re not gonna get eaten by any sharks!” Shiro offers with a grin, dammit, from his comfortable spot in the sea. He’s standing five feet out from the shore just to spite him, hands on his hips, shimmering water sluicing down his chest. From the corner of his eye, Matt can spot where his blazer and boots have been discarded, down by the tide pool overgrown with barnacles.

He thinks. And thinks.

After a loud sigh (to indicate his disapproval, of course), Matt swallows hard and pulls his hair up into a ponytail -- under, over, _snap_. Shiro raises a heavy eyebrow. It sends a thrill up his chest.

Right. Okay. Because this is definitely going to end well.

Matt doesn’t remember when or how he got here, but he’s not going to be held responsible for his actions if it’s anything related to a grinning, shirtless Shiro. He knows better. He’s professional, pragmatic, _prudent_. Ideals of dignified mien have been drilled into his head since his early years as a scientist, but there’s something about this, right now, that is making him forget. Or, at the very least, selectively ignore.

… It does look really, really, tempting, though. That grin is doing something stupid to his gut, and, trust, he’s forgotten more biology than the average person would even learn, so he sure as hell knows it’s just a reduction of blood flow, but that doesn’t stop it from being any less... fluttery. 

Shiro says something else he can’t hear, probably yelling about how it’s _perfectly safe, you don’t have to worry_ , but there’s a beat of silence before it fully registers, and Matt suddenly feels very, very soft. Kind of like the ripples in a still glass of water. His shoulders slack before he realizes they’ve been taut in the first place.

Is soft the right word? Well, okay - probably not, but he’s soft nonetheless.

His training comes to mind. Breathe, relax, reassess. This beach doesn’t look the least bit familiar; why are they in uniform?, but, _ow_ , okay, his brain starts stalling like a broken disk drive and refuses to probe when it’s unnecessary.

Maybe he can do this. Maybe he deserves this. If he’s worked practically all day, every day these past few months for this godforsaken Kerberos mission, he can afford to have a little fun. Going on an exploration shuttle requires a lot of paperwork and Matt nearly developed carpal tunnel in March from typing alone, not to mention the tireless exercises or the aptitude tests.

So. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Some fun sounds good right about now. Plus, he gets to have fun with a shirtless Shiro. Call it a guilty pleasure but, hey, two birds, one fuckin’ stone. Eat your heart out, Galaxy Garrison.

“Fine!” Matt calls out into the water, with a tone that indicates _I’m pissed at you_ and an expression that opposes it with _not really, you idiot, but if we get in trouble I’m blaming you_. He toes off his boots and peels off his socks and can barely get his blazer off in time before the water is already up to his knees, sloshing through his dress pants and freezing them to his legs. Shiro is off to the side, laughing good-naturedly at the way Matt’s shoulders have risen up to his chin, and dodges a spray of frigid water with practiced skill.

“Is this what you wanted? Me, getting hypothermia and dying?” he yells through chattering teeth, trying to ignore the way Shiro’s eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles, or his unfairly toned abs, god damn him, not all of us needed to take weight training-- 

“Yes! Because hypothermia implies that you’ve learned how to chill,” Shiro somehow manages to deadpan, the nerve of him, and immediately makes a break for it by sprinting (or swimming, for all the good it’s doing) towards the open water. Matt, with a sputtered scoff of disbelief, is right behind him, reaching his hands out in a strangling motion and swearing shrilly.

“Hey! _Hey!_ It’s perfectly rational to be afraid of deep water, you absolute _maniac_ , not all of us want to die at twenty four-- get back here!” he wails, spurned, hooks his arms under Shiro’s legs and takes hold like a parasailer. It lets him stay afloat easier than he would normally, and Shiro pretends not to be aware of it but slows down on his behalf anyways.

It’s kind of nice, actually. There’s not a cloud in the blue, blue sky and Matt takes a minute to appreciate actually being outside for once. Romantic’s not the right word for it, but it fits. Somehow.

The two of them make it roughly thirty feet out until Shiro tires, turns around, and submits to his fate-- which means, for some reason, lying back on teal water with his hands clasped over his stomach in the most vulnerable position possible. Matt slows to a halt before him, but not slow enough, because he realizes (with what sounds like sirens going off in his head) that he’s hovering over what could very well be (and probably is, if anything but in his own personal opinion) the single most naturally beautiful human being alive on the planet. God. _God,_ he looks so _young_ , floating serenely on the surface, more like a college co-ed than any military-commended astronaut. The water glues his fringe to his head in a way that makes it look like a mohawk, which is, Matt realizes belatedly, a little endearing.

The light refracting off the water (off his chest, off his face) makes his heart hiccup in a funny little way, and it almost distracts him enough to forget about his revenge.

… Well, y’know. Almost. He grew up in a family with Katie; there’s no such thing as forgetting about your revenge. Fortunately for Shiro, Matt chooses to believe that he’s way less vindictive than his sister, and decides to take mercy on him.

 _Un_ fortunately for Shiro, Matt’s definition of mercy gets wildly skewed when he’s been spurred. He should know. They’ve been labmates.

It all happens in less than a few seconds. He takes a running (swimming) start, leaps, flips, and sits squarely on Shiro’s stomach, sending them tumbling and gurgling into the water. Serves him right. At least Matt’s head is above the surface; Shiro has to scramble for the rocks beside them to get afloat.

He watches in good humor (by which he means cackling uncontrollably) as Shiro sputters and shakes the water from his ears like a cat, hauling himself out of the seafoam and onto a boulder. It reminds him distinctly of a mermaid; the kind from his dad’s movies, ones that breach and sunbathe on rocks in the sunset, all iridescent scales and smiles. Shiro’s not exactly a mermaid, by any means, but with the right tail, he could definitely pull it off. He’s got the muscles for it. And the charm, Matt thinks, unwilling to admit how easily he’d be dragged and drowned.

When Shiro turns and runs a hand through his hair, the long brown tuft at the front flops back like a mop and sticks to his forehead. Rivulets of water are running down the landscape of his chest, practically glittering in the sunlight and, _oh_ , wow, Matt has to veer his eyes away and up to Shiro’s face to keep himself from staring.

He’s already smiling back at him. It’s that weird little soft smile, too, the one he only ever seems to make in specifically Matt-(and sometimes puppy)-related contexts. Shit. He knows. Bad bad bad. Abort mission, sudden death. The words "goo goo eyes" are plastered at the front of his brain in bright, billboard colors. Matt privately wonders if it’s a rational idea to swim back to shore and bury his head in the sand. If he has to spend more than a year on a mission with this constant, terrifying cycle between “oh shit” and “ _ohhh shit_ ”, he might as well jettison himself out of a metal airlock by the end of week one.

“Alright, real mature, Matt,” he chuckles heartily, (throatily?), with a voice that suggests he’s not at all offended by the roughhousing. He might even be a little pleasantly surprised. Oh, god. Yeah, okay, he’s floating in water, but his legs are still doing everything possible to give out from under him.

Matt’s too busy staring to reply. And, alright, to be fair, it’s _Shiro_ ; as far as Matt’s concerned, they could be abducted by aliens right this moment and he’d still be a deer in headlights, but Shiro raises one dark eyebrow and he’s immediately sent out of his trance, backpedaling into a string of stammered words.

“Wh- well,” he starts, and drags himself up onto the rock beside him mid-sentence. “You made the first offense, so I’m perfectly clear.”

He’s fully aware that he’s grinning. It’s not something he can control right now.

“By telling you that you need to relax?”

“By using a pun in the process.”

“Oh, right, okay, and you’re one to talk,” Shiro shoots back with a snort, nudging his elbow playfully. Their knees are almost touching where they’re both sitting high on the outcrop and Matt shifts to face him, partially because his height makes for convenient shade against the sun.

“What do you mean, I’m one to talk?” Matt gasps, faux-offended. “You can’t go a day without making a dad joke, and that’s not something you can refute, because I've timed you.”

“Six months ago!”

“Doesn’t make it any less true,” he drawls, leaning back smugly with his arms crossed over his chest. “Findings are only considered outdated after a decade.”

“Says who? I’m pretty sure Nikola Tesla’s findings are still perfectly valid and, y’know, partially the reason our tech works the way it does.”

“Tesla was also in love with a pigeon at some point, so I think it’s rational to take them with a grain of salt,” Matt chuckles, and can’t help thinking back to his late years of high school, where an attempt to recreate one of Tesla’s antique resonant transformers turned into a flaming disaster. Shiro had charged into the lab with a fire extinguisher and saved the lives of approximately fifteen trapped hamsters before turning to Matt with a shaky grin, entirely unaware of the hand-shaped soot stain on his face and the lingering embers on the tips of his hair. The picture he took on his phone was his lock screen for five months. Katie makes fun of it to this day.

“Right, okay, that’s all well and good, but the real question here is why _I’m_ getting punished for making a pun when your existence is just one huge space-related double entendre,” Shiro says around a grin, moving forward with his hands in the air in what Matt recognizes as the all-powerful tickle maneuver, and oh, _no_ , he’s not falling for it this time. He kicks up his feet and scrambles away with a screech but Shiro moves too fast and now he’s trapped between those arms, a vice-like grip on both his shoulders as his hair is mussed beyond repair.

“Let! _Go!_ ” Matt caterwauls into the crook of Shiro’s neck, wriggling around helplessly until all pressure is released and he’s dropped, laughing and red-faced, into the V of his lap. Everything is warm and loud and he manages to yell a quick, “You know what, Shirogane? You’re awful! Impossible! It’s a _miracle_ I can get any work done at all with someone like you!” where every sentence punctuated by a jab at his chest, cheeks burning at the corners where he’s been smiling too hard.

“Someone like me?” Shiro asks, and the tone of his voice has absolutely no business being as pleasant as it is. “What’s that suppose to mean?”

Matt rolls his eyes fondly, heart light in his chest. It’s funny how talking to Shiro for any longer than five minutes always ends up like this - a little too close, not close enough, a wonderful oscillation between exasperation and exuberance. It’s terrifying, in that sense, but no more terrifying than space is; an unfathomably wide realm of _potential,_ untouched, unbreached - he wants to dive in, disassemble it to its base components, see what it looks like from a different perspective.

So, of course, instead of being the smart and composed human being he’s suppose to be, Matt Holt the aerospace engineer (currently minoring in astrobiology, because, hey, fuck you, it’s _awesome_ ) gives his words a staggering zero-point-three seconds of serious consideration before blurting out, very simply, “You’re an idiot, and it’s making life kind of difficult for me.”

Oh. Oh no. That wasn’t suppose to happen. He’s too smart to _not_ figure out the weird undertone behind his words. Matt gives him a chagrined look as he hurriedly tries to organize his thoughts, and, _fuck_ , there’s an office fire in his head. He can hear the alarms, the way his synapses are burning up--dust--from being impulsive and _stupid_ , how did he think this was going to work? He huffs, clears his throat, puts a hand on the back of his neck and starts sputtering nervously about how, y’know, “because we joke around a lot-- and, uh, it’s hard to get taken seriously when you’re under thirty in the community, is what I mean - that wasn’t an insult, or a dig at anything, even though I do technically out-qualify you, uh, not to sound like a-- it was just--”

Shiro watches him, mouth parted slightly. Matt’s words die in his throat.  

“No, no, I understand.”

_What._

“What?”

“The, uh. The idiot thing. I see how that’s a distraction. I can stop - if you want? Unless you meant it in an endearing way, which is--”

“Nonono, yes!” Matt doesn’t even have time to think because, _wow_ , that’s a hell of a thought. Losing everything that makes him _Shiro_. Nope--okay, he doesn’t even want to picture it, it’s so awful, and he sits up, forgets he’s practically in the other dude’s lap, taps his palm on Shiro’s shoulder in an effort to get his words out. “ _Yes_ , I meant it in an endearing way, of course! Don’t even say that, why would I--?”

“I … don’t know? It was always in the back of my mind, so it makes sense that you’d--”

“-- what? When have I ever told you to-- _don’t_ , you’re great, it’s fine--”

“-- and it’s okay, really, I wouldn’t mind, honestly, I’m not like this around anyone else--”

“ _Shiro._ ”

He says it like a command more than anything and he stops, halts, looks up, his mouth opening and closing like a fish while the tips of his ears flush red.

“Y-.. Yes?”

“Just. Shut up.” Case closed, end of discussion.

Shiro stares. He stares back. Matt swears he feels the world around them rotate, a little, infinitesimally.

He looks down. Back up. Shiro unconsciously brings attention to his mouth by swiping a tongue across his lower lip and it’s _right there_ , Matt wants to _scream_ , it would be so easy, it would be so simple to just close the distance between them--

No.

No, no, no, he can’t do this. He can’t ask Shiro to do this for him; there are things way more important than him ( _the mission, Matt, think of the mission_ ) that could be compromised ... irreparably. By fraternizing. His career, for instance. _Shiro’s_ career. He’s going to be up in the stars for months on end and he knows, he _knows_ that being in the same breathing space as this man for all that time is going to kill him, but he needs to hold back. For their sake.

Even if Shiro’s big hands are gripping his forearms, wrapping all the way around them. Even if Shiro’s chest, dusted lightly with freckles, is rising and falling inches from his. Even if Shiro’s chin is eye level and Matt needs to drag his attention up, up past his lips and the shadow of his cheekbones, to meet his gaze.

Matt’s stomach is currently feeling more watery than the oceans ever will. He marvels at being able to hear his heart pounding from this close-- or maybe it’s just his own, beating hard in his throat and in his head, threatening to shake him apart. Where those hands are on his arms, he feels them squeeze a little, just enough pressure to feel, palms slick with sweat.

Shit.

The time it takes for him to think is interminable. He saw this coming. Months ago, in the Garrison. After all, decision-making under stress (re: tension) was never really his strong suit; there’s an inverse ratio between the size of his mouth and the size of his sangfroid and - it’s terrible, honestly, everyone’s warned him about it at some point but. Hey. What can ya do.

“Um,” Matt breathes, mainly just to hear himself speak, licks his lips and feels his guts bottom out when Shiro’s eyes trace their way to his mouth and back up again. They’re lidded. Oh, Christ.

“Let me guess,” Shiro starts, lurching forward just far enough to knock their foreheads together. His hair tuft tickles where it brushes against his nose. “You’re overthinking things.”

“I’m thinking just enough, thank you very much,” Matt laughs with a crooked grin, nudging Shiro’s chest with the flat of his fist, but he hesitates. He needs to make sure this isn’t just in his head. “You.. do realize the implications of what you’re about to do, though, right?”

Cue the eyebrow raise. He already knows, but chooses to humor Matt anyways. Idiot.

“Huh. Enlighten me.”

“Well, depending, of course, on the nature of the offense and other factors specific to the case, the defendant may receive a penalty lasting up to thirty days, loss of a half-month’s pay for two months, and extra duties or additional limits,” Matt rattles (mostly) complete bullshit off the top of his head, just to be a little shit and watch Shiro’s face expression scrunch up the way it does when he knows someone’s lying.

“Ahuh.”

“It’s very serious,” Matt only half-deadpans, not quite able to keep himself from smiling.

“Can’t argue with that.”

He hums in acknowledgement, carefully noting how their noses are almost touching.

“Well, alright, what _am_ I about to do? You still haven’t told me.”

Another arm squeeze. His leg twitches. One of them swallows and Matt’s so gone he can’t tell who it is.

“And _you_ still haven’t kissed me, but not all of us get what we want, apparently.” Matt is very aware that he’s walking a fine line, but rationality gets a little blurred when you’re this close to a Shiro. If he’s going to break the rules, he’s going to do it with _relish,_ a bang, leaving gunpowder trails in the air. He wants to leave a scorch mark in all of history, and most importantly, on his goddamn mouth.

His breath billows hot on his chin when he talks. He smells faintly of salt water and sweat and military-grade deodorant. While the sun bakes into his shoulders and burns into his core, Matt idly wonders if it’s possible to die from too much sexual tension.

“Is that what you want?” Shiro asks as his mouth dips into the line of Matt’s jaw, already well aware of the answer. His stomach swoops when chapped lips meet at the hollow of his throat, searching but relaxed, taking their time to unwind him.

He’s going to die. This is it, it’s happening. He can already tell. If not now, it’ll be five months from now, in an isolated spaceship millions and millions of miles away.

This selfless, charming, impossible masterpiece of a human being is inevitably, irrevocably, and absolutely going to be the death of him. And it’s - it’s weird, when he thinks about it, (maybe because they’re centimeters apart), but Matt’s an oddball. And he’s not, like, self-conscious about it or anything, this isn’t a 90’s movie, but it’s. It’s just not _why_ he likes him. There’s no one reason, which is probably the ideal situation and he needs to slow down before he crashes and burns, but, looking down his nose at Shiro, he can’t help but feel like, maybe, just maybe, they were bound to end up like this someday.

Might as well die in style, Matt figures, and takes a shuddering breath before moving further into his space. “You tell me.”

Shiro’s grip on him tightens and he’s pulled even closer into a straddle, bodily and entirely, until there’s virtually no air between them. The fine hairs on Shiro's chest brush up against his collarbone as he moves up, scorching a trail of heat into his skin like a wildfire. Oh, _wow_.

Matt must’ve made some kind of noise because Shiro’s movements stammer to a halt and he shifts, leaning back to look at him. From this close, Matt can see how blown out his eyes are, how hard he’s trying to hold back, for propriety’s sake. He doesn’t want him to hold back. The thought of it turns his blood into quicksilver.

Huh. An analogy surfaces; something he remembers from theoretical physics. Or Star Trek. One of the two.

“Right, um. Shiro. We-- us. This thing we have, here. If you think about it, it’s kind of like.. crossing the event horizon, really.”

Shiro, interested, raises a brow. A smile creases his lips. Matt can see how dry they are, how they swell around vowels, can map every freckle on his sun-kissed face. “I ... see. How so?”

It takes a little work to keep his voice from shaking, but he makes do. “Well, our relationship as co-workers--as crewmates and friends, is linear. Safe, normal, naturally progressing, y’know. Until we reach a singularity.”

“Right,” Shiro picks up, having taken these courses as a pilot. He’s much smarter than anyone lets him on to be, and it’s convenient that he sees where Matt’s going with this. “The point of no return.”

“Where change becomes exponential.”

“And irreversible.”

His breathing is fast, shallow. Matt can feel their chests rising and falling where he’s pressed up against Shiro, feels the constant movement of skin against skin, and it does something funny to his stomach that he thinks might be a symptom of dying.

When he looks up, all he can focus on are darkened, glassy eyes, shadowed by long lashes. Shiro swallows. His thoughts stutter.

“And I’m guessing.. this is it?”

At this, Matt grins, devilish and sure. “Only if you want it to be.”

A switch is turned on and what little space they share is suddenly charged, _electric_ , rooting him into place and urging him forward at the same time. Shiro finds his lips like lightning finds the ground, white-hot and _smoldering_ , burning stars into his eyes and over his mouth. He wants this more than anything--wants to let it simmer, wants to hold tight and never let go, oh, _god_. Shiro pulls back, heads down, past the crux of his jaw and onto his neck, and Matt wonders how hard he can crane it before something snaps.

The more his breath fans over his skin, the hazier the world becomes, tugging sharply at the strings of his spine and pooling warm in his gut. Hands--right, okay, his hands-- his thoughts blur so hard he can’t figure out what do with them, so Matt reaches around that broad chest and digs his fingers into the flume of muscle near those shoulders, finding purchase in the warm oxbows of his sides and ghosting them down to the small of his back.  

Shiro expresses his approval by humming into Matt’s collarbone, dragging an incisor lightly up the length of his throat. It catches a little under his adam’s apple. Stars die. He whimpers.

There’s a hand on the underside of his thigh that pulls him even closer, and then there are arms around his middle that move up and up and into his hair, card through it in spite of his ponytail, firm on the back of his neck, warm and strong and _oh_ , wow, the world seems to burn brighter when he opens his mouth to pull Shiro in. His breath stutters. His everything stutters. He holds on like he might fall off the face of the earth if he doesn’t and thinks that maybe, there’s a distant possibility that he might’ve been a little forward with his intentions. A scientist always gets results, after all. The sound of Shiro’s panting, (mouthing at the shell of his ear, laving at his neck) might be cause for bias, but, hey, so is fraternizing, and Matt already knows how he feels about  _that_.

When Shiro sucks kisses down the length of his neck, right over the pulse line, his entire body shivers in one huge go. Matt reaches up towards the top of his spine, moves his palms down C1, C2, rolls his hips on a whim and-- " _Hah,_ " --groans as fire shoots up his gut all the way to his teeth. The adrenaline alone is making him shake, but this? Yeah, no, he’s done for.

Shiro pulls back, red-lipped from the care to his neck, and the sight of him all kiss-mussed makes his breath hitch. He’s smiling that signature Shiro Smile, all soft-eyed and tender, but there’s a semblance of danger behind it that Matt logs away to be explored later.

“W-how,” he says in a sigh, right as Matt thinks it. “I-- um. Was that too much?”

And it’s in that moment, right as he’s about to chuckle and say, “ _No, Takashi, not nearly enough,_ ” that Matt realizes the universe is cruel.

 

Something draws his eye from Shiro and--

 

Oh.

 

Oh, whoa, that’s _weird._

There’s a certain buzz at his fingertips, through his teeth, between his ears that feels like someone’s lit a plasma globe inside his skull and left it to burn out. He looks up, past the curve of Shiro’s jaw, and stares. The world has a weird fade to it, broken and rough around the edges. Pictures flash behind his eyes; _a polaroid held too tightly, the green static on a TV screen_. If he could just focus the image, pull back the haze, he might just be able to--

 _“Matt?”_ says a voice through the fog, and he knows it’s Shiro, he was right here, but why can’t he _see_ Shiro? Quick, _quick_ , he holds his hands out to reach for a body, he _remembers_ , the one that was held against him just moments ago, but it’s gone, and all he catches are curls of smoke in his hands.

He stands, fast, _too_ fast, and blood rushes up into his head like a swarm of locusts. _Afraid_ , he thinks, can't think, what?, and swats at the plague that isn’t there. They dig into his skin, hook under his arms, pull and pull and _pull_ , but they’re not there. None of them are there.

He looks up. Up? No, he looks down, down at his feet that refuse to move anymore, at the boulder that pricks his soles raw, at the water that rushes and rushes towards him with a line of foam at its head. He doesn’t want to fall in. He can’t right now, but he knows he doesn’t want to fall in.

He drags his eyes up past the water and towards the shore. There is no shore. _That’s weird._ Was there ever a shore? His brow furrows. He remembers sand between his toes and thinks _yes, there was, probably._ He can’t go back to it anymore, though, so he traces the outline of the horizon for any other landmass in one huge sweep and finds none. Strange. Everything is so strange, so dark, so loud and imposing.

The cold begins to set in. Wind whips around him, relentless, stinging where it meets the still-wet parts of his skin. It burrows into his chest and settles in his bones, locks his teeth, arches his spine. There needs to be a way out of this, out of _here_ , but there’s no land for miles.

Water. Can he swim? No, there’s too many things that would kill him, drag him under. Can he wait? No, no, definitely, there’s too many ways he could die. Trapped. Alone, hungry. Baking on the rocks, ribs exposed, carrion.

He panics. The buzzing is louder, now, like a shuttle taking off in his skull and he swears, _swears_ he’s felt this before, in the aerotrim of the Garrison, from the nipkow disk in his lab, there, here, in front of Shiro, ligaments of lightning bouncing back and forth between his nerves and passing through his lips.

Christ, it _hurts_. It hurts and hurts and he can’t think and there’s no way out of this and he trips, stumbles, loses his footing and tilts dangerously far ( _point of no return, singularity)_ where there’s a half-second of vertigo and then he’s falling, weightless, _why can’t he feel his legs?_ , smacks hard against the surface of the water and goes tumbling into the deep.

 

 

*

 

_“Is it waking up?”_

 

_(There’s the distant, droning hum of an idle engine and the sound of several clattering tools being placed into a tray. The cot squeaks as it rolls into the room. A sense of urgent, sick curiosity fills the space as some press up against the glass, faces eager, eyes wide, fogging it up as they breathe.)_

 

_“Appears so.”_

 

_(A sharp snap, a stifled grunt.)_

 

_“Get the restraints.”_

 

*

 

Matt is awake before he knows he’s been asleep.

 _A light_ , several, blinding, above and around him, smothers his senses. He smells blood. Blood, right, _is someone hurt?_ , _where’s Shiro?_ , and there are arms at his sides that push him down and back into a hard surface, _hold still_ , voices that crowd around him and speak over him, encroaching, loud, shifting like the restless doctors at a hospital. Something beeps in the distance and he recognizes the sound of an EKG, the sound of his own heartbeat through a machine, speeding up as adrenaline fills his system. He licks his teeth and tastes copper. Something weighs cold in his stomach.

He goes to sit up, can’t, is stopped by tight restraints on his arms, _what?_ , cranes his neck to look down at his legs and nearly screams.

He must be dreaming. He must be having some morbid, relentless, five-month-long _nightmare_ because when he looks down at his legs they’ve been hacked off and _replaced_ , knee-down, with mass-produced running blades that bow backwards like hooves.

No. He remembers. He remembers the explosion, around all the other slaves. Engine malfunction. Remembers the screaming, the fire, the blood sticking hot to his brow. He remembers a witch, an opportunist, experimentalist, talking business over his body like he’d already been signed off to the morgue.

Great. Great, he thinks, teeth clenched over blood. He’s been abducted, inducted, imprisoned and _enslaved_ , so the least they could do is let him keep his humanity.

But they didn’t - just to add to the _awesomeness_ of what’s happened so far, _fuck_ \- but they ripped it away from him, went through with it anyways, like the arena, a colosseum, the masses cheering and surging. Mindless, remorseless, headed towards gore in spite of it. This is what they are, and this is what they do. Romans. Animals. All of them.

Matt swallows back his horror (along with a molar, maybe) and thinks. Contemplates. He’s not quite a weapon, not quite a test subject, stuck in a muddy middle ground entirely made up of cultural exigency; a zeitgeist of “ _what if_ ”. He’s the alien equivalent of a crash test dummy. At least humans had _some_ morals. Apparently ideas like resource over life are a universal concept and it’s all too familiar. Christ.

Matt remembers, bitterly, that it’s why he went to Kerberos in the first place; to reintroduce energy alternatives, a two hundred metric ton love letter to _science_ , space, infinity, to remind them that the Earth is not all they have, to bring back possibilities and feel them in his hands through the skin of a spacesuit, the swell of _wonder_ in his chest, to give it to others, like him, children with their eyes glued to a screen, watching open-mouthed as a streamlined white shape shudders and takes off into the sky.

Not this. Never this.

It’s with sad irony that Matt realizes being born into a family of geniuses would’ve set him up for inevitable success. ... _If_ he hadn’t been abducted. Just his luck. Oh, god, every time he thinks about his ship it feels like a punch to the gut. His research. All of their findings, gone, null, lost to deep space and never to be found again. _Fuck_.

It’s terrible. It’s infuriating. He’s a scientist, goddammit. He’s devoted his life to space exploration, which is, mind you, the most awesome and progressive thing you could possibly _do_ as a human being, so it’s not hard to see how Matt thought it was kind of sick and unfair to be sent to space-prison on the premonitions that he’d be spliced and tortured and fucking _experimented_ on.

Well. If he’s being used as a guinea pig for some morbid intergalactic arms race, then, right, okay, like _hell_ he’s going to cooperate. This is not all he’s living for.

He’s going to fight back if it kills him.

Matt grits his teeth and reels back, kicks, once, twice, _hard_ , snags a druid in the jaw _\--ha!_ \--swings around, hooks his legs over some cables and _pulls_ , bringing the entire monitor system down on top of them. There’s a siren that blares in the background, a soundtrack to this chaos, while he does everything possible to free himself, (a broken horse, a broken man), bites down on the straps around his arms, rips them off like velcro, breaks his lips, struggles, strains, and then he’s _free_.

He rolls off the cot, hit-stumbles on his new legs like a fawn, finds unexpected power in the way his heels coil, and takes off running. When he looks back, he feels sick satisfaction at all the scientists scrambling to right their equipment--knows what that feels like--the panic, the need to gather information, the _what if I miss something_ , has never been on the receiving end and never _wants_ to be, spits blood at the cloaked reptilian standing by the door just to spite him, and bolts.

He goes pounding down the corridors, this is _insane_ , he knows, has no plan, doesn’t need one, runs on the gold in his veins and the fire in his lungs alone. Galran guards are stationed at every end and take aim but never fire, _(suck it!)_ , he knows he’s valuable and _relishes_ it, takes every opportunity to flip off a sentry, it’s childish, _who cares_ , rounds corners and corners and-- _oh_ , fuck, he’s cornered.

Before he can do anything about it, they file into the room by twos and choke off every exit. He backs up. Slowly. Arms raised, placating. Okay. Time to stall, strike some jokes. Maybe if he can squeeze through those two guys over there he could-- _“Shit!”_

Pain flares bright and sharp in the meat of his shoulder and, o-kay. He stumbles, hits a wall, slides down, collapses. It’s only when Matt sees the feather-tipped needle lodged in his arm does he realize just how screwed he is. Fuck. Cool. Aliens use tranqs, go figure.

He knows better than to rip it out, but does anyways, just so there’s something to do, and wills himself not to stare at the erythema already forming around the wound. It’s the most red he’s seen in a week. Shit.

Shit, shit shitshitshit, god _damn_ it. The world is already turning fuzzy around the edges like the fade-out ending of a movie. Roll credits, film burns into the projector. This always happens. This always, always happens. He’d get so close, so _brilliantly_ close, taste freedom on his tongue like ichor, and then his wings would burn up in the sun and he’d drown, get dragged back by his feet, kicking, screaming, tired.

He wonders if he’ll ever taste clean water again. He wonders if he’ll ever see _light_ again, the kind that isn’t fluorescent or artificial, the kind that beckons and warms and nurtures, the _sun_ , the ocean, can feel it all in his hands but it falls away, slips through his fingers like sand, gone, intangible, unreachable. Hot tears stream down his face when he thinks about his mother, oh god, what she must be going through. It took her enough convincing to let him go to Kerberos. She must be blaming herself for this, now a widow, just as tired and sad as he is. At least she has Katie. At least he has his father.

And Shiro, Matt thinks with a smile, as the Galra take him away by the shoulders. And Shiro, with his charm, with his laugh and his wit and his bone-crushing hugs, somewhere between a dream and a memory. Maybe they’ll get out of this together, have something beyond it, someday. Share wistful, sad little looks in five, ten years when they’re reminded of it. When he’s not weak. When he can stomach what they’ve done to him and move past it.

Until then, he’ll try. Until they break him and splinter him beyond repair, he’ll keep trying, and he’ll do it himself - pull down the pillars like the walls of fuckin’ _Jericho_ if he has to, if only for a chance, a _glimpse_ at freedom. He’ll get out of here, eventually. Someday.

Right.

 

_Fuck._

 

They throw him into a room that, from a brief look, is more like a lab than a cell, and shut the door behind him. He's locked in cold, palpable darkness. It might just be his own vision, actually; his eyes are peeled so wide open it stings, retinas straining, but he still can’t see a thing. Oh, no, yeah, it’s definitely the tranq, hah, because now he can taste something rancid at the back of his throat between fits of rattling dyspnea that he recognizes, unmistakably, as a consequence of misdemeanor in this draconian hellzone.

He's figured out that it’s like, some … weird, emetophobia-based punishment technique. The Galra came up with to prod him and the millions of other slaves like him into place. It’s either conveniently compatible with human biology, or--dare he say it--customized just for him. He doesn’t know which is worse. How thoughtful.

In any case, it’s fucked. It’s happened before. He just needs to go through the motions; wait it out, see if it’s easier than the last few times, try not to get it in his hair.

Right on cue, he curls over and heaves, nails grating against the tile, as bile piles up behind his teeth. There's a choked off cry, and then he’s clutching at his abdomen as the contents of his insides splatter on the floor. Stomach acid drips from his nose in long, vile strings. Guh.

Matt sits there, whimpering and shimmering in his trauma, letting the nausea dissipate so he doesn’t have to think about how gross it feels, but the Galra don’t feel the same sentiment. It surprises absolutely no one when they swoop in over him and carry him off bonelessly. He barely has a chance to compose himself before there are belligerent hands on his arms and he’s lifted, up into a sac carry, over the hard line of a soldier’s pauldron.

He still can’t see. His cheek scratches against something purple and hairy. Matt doesn’t so much as twitch when the world, slowly and silently, slips away from his senses to the beat of steady footfalls.

 

*

 

He’s having a pretty good time, floating around in the weightless ether, until a door _slams_ , bangs off its hinges, and reality comes back into his veins like a power surge. He sits up, fast, on-edge and terrified, nearly giving himself whiplash in the process and-- mm, yeah, shouldn’t have done that. His head is pounding, and he decides to wait until the pain crests over before doing anything that requires moving. Or any motor skills at all, actually. _Ouch._

It lifts away pretty quickly and he squints the light out of his eyes, smoothing circles over his temples. Right, okay. You're alive. Breathe, relax, reassess.

It’s... a different room. Not even the one he was in before. God, could this day get any fucking weirder.

It’s the size of a broom closet, can’t be over 4x4 - his knees are pulled up to his chest because they hit the wall fully extended. There’s a janitorial cart across from him, and a sheathed knife hanging by its strap from a shelf in plain view. The guard must’ve dropped him off here while they prepared his cot or something. It’s the only explanation he could find as to why the.. door’s… unlocked.

Oh.

Well, damn.

It’s serendipity. An accident. Maybe both. He doesn’t want to question it too much--(what if it’s a trap? nnno, shut up)--because, okay, listen. Of the year and a half he’s spent in this godforsaken place, he’s learned that questioning the Galra only leads to bad shit. Like, exclusively bad shit. It’s gotten to the point that he’s fairly certain Murphy’s Law is out to get him, but. Okay, he thinks, reaching out and taking the knife in his hands. At least it’s a start.

He turns the blade over and unsheathes it. It’s--well, it’s more like a dagger than a knife, really, and it looks like it doesn’t quite belong in a Galra facility, since they all seem pretty set on their whole purple-equals-evil regime and this knife is. Definitely blue.

Matt swallows hard and looks up through the crack in the door, where a thin sliver of light pierces through the darkness, painting a white line across his legs.

… He could escape. He’s a fast kid. Took track in high school. He could sneak out and hijack a spaceship and free his dad and go home. They took away his limp when they amputated his legs and now he has a weapon. It’s plausible. The perfect opportunity. It’s--

Something hitches in his stomach, like his conscience manifested as a kick drum, and it jars him out of his thoughts. Matt stares at the knife in his hands, traces the outline of the blade, and sighs.

It’s ... cowardly. Leaving all these innocent people, leaving _Shiro_ behind, fuck--he’s not exactly a hero, but it doesn’t take being one to know that it’s cruel. He could do more. He has a chance to do something now, and hell if he’s not going to take it. He was always a little recalcitrant, in that sense. Contribute as much as possible, make your life significant - the kind of stuff that would cover his walls in college. He never thought it would be by liberating alien prisoners like some wild deep-space freedom fighter, but. Everyone finds their calling, right? His was just… unexpected.

_Altruism. (n.)_

  1. _(in Biology) The behavior of an animal that benefits another at its own expense._



Matt sucks in a rattling breath through his mouth and holds it, tamps down his neuroses. Okay. So, back in the Garrison, there was this unspoken rule of “you’re not allowed into space unless you’re fuckin’ shredded” which is, number one, cruel to people like him that took core-building classes for over three years and never turned into a Shiro--that’s beside the point, anyways--it means he’s _capable_. As a slave, his muscles have atrophied from being underfed, but not from going unused. Plus, he has enough required training with a bō staff to not be _completely_ helpless in the self-defense department but, to be fair, he’s beginning to suspect that Shiro was taking it easy on him the entire time, so. Whatever. Only one way to find out.

Numbers begin to connect in his brain like they always have--hormones, chemicals--and it’s refreshing to have something tangible to work with for once; there’ve been opportunities in the past but they came exclusive of his family, and he’s not about to leave them behind either. His dad is probably still on the same ship, if they haven’t moved him after the explosion. All he needs to do is find his way back to that cell block, maybe access some codes, and-- oh?

His finger slides over a square of paper, shoved into the hollow part of the hilt. Huh. He gently pulls it out and the sheet falls open in his lap, thin white lines passing over and over each other on the surface. He can’t make any sense of it--must be alien writing--that is, until, he recognizes a shape. It’s the same grid structure as his building. He’s only seen it from above a handful of times, but it’s enough to recognize the two as the same. Congruent. He’s holding _blueprints_.

There--he follows the lines with his index finger, traces them reverently, from the ventilation system to the loading bay. Somebody wants to help him.

This real. This is happening. Holy shit.

Wait, no. Not yet, hold on.

Matt squeezes his eyes shut and makes himself a deal, just to make sure he’s not hallucinating or, y’know, something else equally inconvenient and terrible. It used to happen a lot - he’d fall asleep, imagine an entire escape sequence in his head, and then he’d open his eyes and watch it all disappear to the emptiness of his cell. Entire days would go by where he’d be trapped in his own mind, a nebula of fiction, as his body worked on autopilot. He needs to make sure. Just to be safe. Exhales, clenches his fists. Just to be safe.

He leans his head back on the wall and waits, stars burning into his retinas from pressure. Ten seconds should be enough. Yeah. That sounds good. Ten seconds. If he looks up and everything’s gone - if he looks up and he’s back in his cell, back at square one, it’ll _kill_ him, but at least he’ll know that it wasn’t real. Ten seconds. His heart pounds in his throat. Okay.

 

_Ten._

 

...

 

*

 

The door is still open when he looks up.

 

*

 

He runs.

 

╰☆╮

 

**Author's Note:**

> borrowed some fun physics from agents of shield! (because i am not a physicist, nor am i smart enough to know these things and make them romantic without being one lmao)
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr!](http://rakukajas.tumblr.com/ask/) ♡


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